


Shards

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Equilibrium (2002)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-09
Updated: 2005-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do Tetragram Clerics confiscate magical relics?  A multi-crossover tailored to the recipient's interests list, including Buffy, Highlander, Firefly, and Harry Potter.  Yes, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shards

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tigerlady

 

 

 **Fandom:** Equilibrium...and several others  
 **Pairing:** Preston/Partridge (nothing explicit, sorry, but I promise: they're SO married)  
 **Rating:** PG-13 (some language and a little off-screen gore)  
 **Written For:** Tigerlady (docmichelle)

 **Disclaimer:** All recognizable characters and concepts belong to their respective creators, but this story belongs to me. Lord help me.

 **Author's Note:** Of the four options I was given, Equilibrium was unfortunately the only one I know anything about! I was slammed with both writer's block _and_ IRL craziness, and this is very late, and I wrote it with a fever, so perhaps that explains how _utterly cracked out it is_ , but I deliberately chose all of the following crossovers from TigerLady's LJ interests list, and it's much longer than the minimum required, and it haunted my fever-dreams all one night, so...I hope she likes it. Or at least doesn't beat me over the head with the nearest large heavy blunt object.

 **Additional Note:** I suppose you could say this is "Five Things That Never Happened To Preston And Partridge," in a way. Though it's not quite five. Unless that's five fandoms total? I had one more scene in mind, but being stuck on that one scene has delayed this story for more than another week, so...bah, it's late enough already, so never mind. I sincerely hope this is enough madness as-is.

  


* * *

  
   
John Preston lifted his gun and braced himself. A flicker of motion had caught his eye when he'd passed this open doorway, and his instincts whipped him back in mid-stride and flattened him against the wall in perfect silence. Three...two...one...

Not a sound from within, and no sense of a living body either. Even a man standing dead still, holding his breath, had a heartbeat and took up space. Clerics were taught a sense for that, a sense for _existence_ , and Cleric Preston was of course the best of his kind.

So he listened, eyes open but seeing nothing in the gloomy corridor. Hearing, _feeling_ nothing but the distant tramp of boots and the occasional faint order as his men sorted through the lower levels. This place belonged to a man who'd decided it was his calling to rescue artifacts from across the lifeless, ash-choked seas. They'd been unable to capture the collector himself. It was odd. The man -- a mere bent elderly fellow -- had been there when they'd arrived, and then he simply hadn't been.

Most likely the wily old sense-criminal had slipped through a secret panel in the walls. These matters were quite routine; predictable, even. After all, he couldn't have simply vanished into thin air. Cleric Preston opted to leave the obvious trail in the hands of his trainee Enforcers while he pursued one of those useful hunches that had always served him well in past.

And thus Cleric Preston had taken it upon himself to inspect the upper floor on his own.

He moved into the doorway now, dropping low and fluid like a cat. Though he was by now quite certain that the chamber beyond was deserted, there was no sense in taking risks with a man who could vanish into thin air. Or so one of the trainees swore -- Atkinson, a steady boy with no more imagination than a cinderblock. Which was the only reason why Preston was taking such precautions--

There was that movement again, directly across the cluttered room. Most of the mess was broken furniture in various stages of repair; wooden furniture for the most part, dry and brittle with age. This place would light up like a torch... Soon. For now, Preston calmly stood and let his gun fall back to his side -- not holstering it, a wise Cleric never holstered his sidearm while a sweep was still in progress -- and his own perfectly-shined boots crackled through drifts of papery debris as he strode to examine his distraction.

A mirror, nothing more. A mirror set into an ancient frame, dusty but obviously ornate, standing taller than a man and resting against the far wall. Words curved along the wood which arched over the top of the looking glass. The inscription appeared to be pure gibberish, and yet the cleric's black-gloved hand twitched with a strange impulse to reach up and trace the decorative lettering. To somehow make cold hard sense from senseless useless art...

Then he looked directly into the mirror itself.

  


* * *

  
   
John Preston lifted his gun and braced himself. "You're sure this is the right place?"

Across the gaping archway, pressed against the opposite stone wall in exactly the same fashion, Partridge snorted as if affronted. "Of course I'm sure."

" _This_ time..."

"Look, either it's the right place and she's got no way out, or it's the wrong place and no harm done."

"Aha, but you forget option C: it's the wrong place _and_ it's infested with vampires."

Partridge flashed that easy charming half-smile with which he still managed to win his own way even after all these many, many years. "Even if that's the case, mate, this _is_ the right place. Better than hitting the wrong side of town and terrorizing a slumber-party by accident. That one was all yours."

"Oh for fuck's sake, let it go already. That bloody tip said Jackson _Avenue_ , not Jackson _Street_ \--"

"Yeah yeah. On one. Three, two..."

The "one" was silent. Instead, exactly on cue, both men dropped instantly from banter to action and moved into the darkened crypt with the practiced ease of assassins. Except most assassins worked alone, not in perfect wolf-like unison...

For a few wary silent moments there was nothing but the slide and crunch of their own boots, feeling forward through a drift of dead leaves that had blown through the crypt gate over the years. From long habit, Preston counted slowly to himself as his eyes strained to adjust. _One...two...three..._

A slight movement in the darkness at the back of the stone chamber was their only warning. Preston threw himself aside as a stone cherub, easily thirty pounds if it was an ounce, detonated against the wall where he'd stood not an instant before. He bit down a curse as granite chips ricocheted into his back like bullets; his heavy leather vest absorbed the worst of the shrapnel, but his arm was not so lucky.

Eh. It'd heal. He was already moving to flank the sarcophagus in the center of the vault; knowing Partridge was already doing the same opposite. Already knowing that the girl -- and she _was_ just a girl, all instinct and guts and desperation, no training whatsoever -- would seize her chance to escape, lunging towards the grey pre-dawn beacon of the open doorway...

Predictable. He didn't need to see to know exactly where to aim the tazer; a hissing crack of electricity, a short shocked shriek, and then their quarry tumbled messily to the floor between sarcophagus and door. Caught in mid-leap like a gut-shot doe. Partridge was already moving to intercept, very cautiously. If she was still conscious she was still dangerous, and pain was still pain even if you couldn't die from it...

Preston only relaxed when his partner finally switched on his flashlight, exchanging a relieved glance in the sudden glare. The girl was a limp dark-haired sprawl on the stone floor, all coltish long legs and bare torso; she couldn't have been more than fourteen. His partner already held her arm pinned in the crook of his elbow, coolly injecting the powerful narcotic cocktail that would keep her under long enough to haul her into custody. "Nice shot. What did this one do, again?"

"Stove in half of her mum's ribs and nearly ripped off a cop's arm." Preston leaned his ass against the crypt, fishing out a well-earned cigarette while Partridge trussed their captive for transport. "Remember back in the day when kids didn't have superpowers?"

"No idea. Never had kids. You?"

"Oh, y'know, I never really found time..."

They exchanged a weary smile at the tired old joke. Even if they could have fathered children in the first place, these would be strange times to raise 'em. Especially daughters. It hadn't been long since the Event -- six months, maybe eight -- but when girls across the globe suddenly acquired super-strength and heightened abilities...

It was a damn good thing that for every teenie who could now bend steel with her bare hands, there was also at least one grown woman with the same abilities. And for every juvenile delinquent who was now a certified lethal weapon, thank god at least one of those equally powerful grown women was a cop, or a tae kwon do instructor, or a member of the military... Women who'd come together in the months since to drag society's power balance back into safe alignment.

Which was all well and good for the world, but it pretty much left men out in the cold.

For the most part.

Partridge rose to his feet with the rogue Slayer over his shoulder, barely grunting with the effort. She wasn't heavy. "Hey. Sounded like you got hit."

"What? Oh." Preston probed the new tears in his sleeve to find, predictably, that the cuts had already closed. When he rubbed his arm, however, he groaned to find at least two chips of stone were now embedded beneath new unscarred flesh. "Not really, just some shrapnel...looks like I'm gonna have to cut the fuckers out later. Can I get your help with that?"

This earned him an amused look. "You're going to trust me that close to your neck with a blade, eh?"

"Just a small one. You don't need a sword to conduct first aid, you smug bastard."

Boots crunching in dead leaves amid the bobbing glow of his flashlight, Partridge was already heading out. "Things were a lot simpler when our only goal in life was to lop off either others' heads, eh?"

Preston chuckled as he followed after. "Yeah, but this pays better."

  


* * *

  
   
John Preston lifted his gun and braced himself. It was pointless, absolutely ruttin' pointless -- pumping bullets he couldn't afford to expend at an impossible target was idiotic and practically suicide -- but he pointed the muzzle straight up and wrenched down the trigger anyway as the phalanx of Alliance bombers swooped past far overhead.

Only when his gun gave up the ghost with a reproachful little "clickclickclickclick" did he realize that he'd been screaming at the sky, too. Screaming what, he didn't know. Defiance, he hoped. Something really brave and brilliant that would look good on a tombstone...or better yet, in the viewscreen of a textbook. He only hoped that the accompanying photo would be one that was taken, oh, say a few months before his death, because right now his own mother wouldn't recognize him. It simply wouldn't do to go down in history looking like--

Preston's fatalistic musings were hacked off short as what felt like about a metric ton of meat slammed into him from behind, throwing him stomach-first to the ground and nearly knocking a couple of his teeth out on the process. He tried to protest, promptly gagging on a mouthful of dust as a hand on the back of the skull mashed him flat

\--and then the world went white and (an instant later) briefly very hot and very windy.

"I thought trying to get us both killed was _my_ job," a far-too-familiar voice grumbled into his ear when the debris finally settled. "What the guay was that all about anyway?"

"May as well," Preston mumbled into the dirt. One side of his face felt baked -- whatever had just gone off had gone off awful close. "I don't know about you, but I've been thinking about it, and I think getting blown to bits is a lot quicker than starving to death and a lot less painful that being taken prisoner. McAllister said--"

"I know what McAllister said, and McAllister was full of depressing fatalistic bullshit." Along with a startling amount of blood and intestines; _that_ was a memory that wasn't going to fade any time soon. On the upside, Preston hadn't been conscious at the time to see it. On the downside, there wasn't any extra water to get the resultant caked stains out of Partridge's shirt.

Sometimes, at times like this, it's the small stupid details that stick in your brain for a long time afterward.

Partridge was clambering up now, giving Preston room to get up if he so chose. The exposed back of his own neck felt as if it'd been severely sunburned. Tyen- _sah_ that one'd been close. Not for the first time since they'd dug in on this forsaken rock he hoped the Alliance wasn't using dirty explosives. In that case, they were already dead a dozen times over anyway.

That didn't stop Partridge from getting back up every time and slogging on anyway. Unlike Preston. Who hadn't always been like that, mind...just since the rumored re-enforcements had never shown up. Neither of them knew why they'd been abandoned; there was no one left from their unit nor any others in the area to pass any news along, useless though it might have been. Only the stark obvious knowledge that night was falling, again, and no help was coming, and that there was no point in sticking to their position any longer. Not with the bodies starting to rot...

As far as Partridge was concerned, Preston simply hadn't been quite right in the head since that last attack, the one that'd left them without anybody but each other. Oh, the man'd taken a pretty hard knock to the skull, but it was more than that. Something in him was just...gone. Partridge practically had to drag him this far, and at this rate he was going to have to drag him the rest of the way too.

Which he'd do, of course.

Sure enough, Preston was still glowering belly-down in the dirt. "I don't see why I have to let you get me killed when I'm perfectly capable of getting myself killed all by myself."

"We're not going to get killed. Especially now that you've managed to waste any bullets you had left. It'll be a lot easier to sneak without you trying to bring down Allie fighters bare-handed. We'll get there, all right? We'll _get_ there."

Preston dragged his elbows underneath himself, but only enough to fold his arms under his head and sink back down tiredly. He'd rolled his head aside to look as Partridge as they spoke, but the makeshift bandage swathing half of his forehead was now slipping down over one eye to render the attempt somewhat moot. "What if you're wrong? There's a lot of open ground between here and--"

"Yeah. I know." Partridge hooked a hand under one of those stubbornly folded elbows and pulled, disregarding both glare and ensuing curses alike until he had his comrade back on his...well, if not on his feet, then at least on his knees. Which was a start. "Not much to go on. But what else've we got?"

"Sweet, merciful death?"

For a moment, Partridge was forced to grind his teeth to swallow down a scorching retort. Serenity Valley was quiet in the darkness, a vast emptiness lit here and there by smoldering wreckage. To regain control over his fraying temper, he lifted his gaze to the faint intermittent glow in the lee of the ridge opposite and again prayed that it was, indeed, the encampment they'd heard rumored...an impromptu rallying point, an unsanctioned rendezvous for the scattered few who still drew breath. One last living place here in the shadow of death. Survivors of other lost brigades had mentioned it on their limping way through, before the world had fallen roaring down around his ears and he'd been left with only one other body still drawing breath amidst the tortured wreckage of the men they'd both grown up with...

Another obstinate grunt-and- _pull_ and he had them both standing, despite Preston's growl of pain. "Qing ren, I might be stupid enough to love you, but if you don't get your gorram ass moving _right now_ I'm going to merrily kill you myself. With a shoelace."

  


* * *

  
   
John Preston lifted his gun and braced himself. Before the mirror could cast its strange spell over him one moment (or one vision) more, he pulled the trigger.

In a rattling staccato flash, the looking glass shattered violently in its frame. Shards and slivers rained to the discolored carpet around the Cleric's boots; his cheek briefly stung as the entire frame reeled back (as though shocked... _what an odd thing to think, objects have no emotions_ ) to thud heavily against the wall. Done. Though the wood backing remained surprisingly intact, the glass itself was no more. Old glass, ancient glass. Modern glass didn't shatter; it cobwebbed and crumbled. Modern glass was safe. Old glass, though...

The Cleric didn't notice his free hand lifting to his cheek, wiping away the blood trickling down the pale stubborn line of his jaw. It didn't matter. Blood didn't show on black synthleather anyway, and he didn't bother to look. If he hadn't already lived his entire life swaddled in the emotional cotton-wool of drugs and discipline he might have recognized the hollow sensation as "shock." But he couldn't, and he didn't.

He took a single crunching step back, glancing down to assure his footing...and that was a mistake. A flickering motion that was not his own caught his eye, and with his keen instincts for observation he couldn't help but to stop and stare. Another vision, yes, but this one was not big enough to drag him in like the others. This time he was still quite conscious of his own steady breath, the ever-present snug fit of his uniform collar, and a growing chill in the lonely deserted room as he gazed into another deserted room through a shard of glass no larger than his hand. Just large enough for him to glimpse stone columns in the background, behind--

He did not feel nor hear the catch in his own breath. This time the image was indeed that of his partner -- not some hallucinatory distortion, but the man himself. He was sure of it, as sure as he knew his own reflection... Except for the man's eyes. Something was very wrong with his eyes. They were the same color as they'd always been, yes, and yet they were _wrong_.

It took Preston a heartbeat longer to notice the book in mirror-Partridge's hand.

 _"A very heavy cost."_ He knew his partner so well that he could read his lips in the image, almost hear his voice. _"I pay it gladly."_ And then the book rose, and there was no more of that terrible gaze to be seen...

In the mirror, John Preston lifted his gun and braced himself.

In the deserted room, standing amidst a sea of broken glass, John Preston was faster. The shard -- and the vision, the _lie_ \-- practically disintegrated. His expression did not change, but when he finally released the trigger the ancient carpet was a shredded ruin.

In the echoing silence, he found that he was breathing hard.

"You shouldn't charge off alone on this sort of sweep." The voice behind him was mild, calm, and perfectly familiar. Thus he didn't turn around, even when footsteps approached through the rustling papers. "I'm sorry to say that we've found no sign of the sense offender. I'm starting to wonder if he really did disapparate."

Preston knew as well as Partridge how unlikely that was, not with the Libria wards temporarily extended out over this block of the Nethers to prevent that exact sort of problem. Still, one had to consider even the improbable as a possibility when the probable held no answers; so he simply nodded. "I'm assuming you didn't mention that possibility to the trainees."

"Of course not." That went without saying. Only at the highest level were Clerics allowed more than basic knowledge about the Magi, the _other_ branch of the Tetragram -- before that, they were only counseled that certain artifacts and particular sense criminals were more dangerous than others. Far more dangerous.

Everyone knew of the war, of course. What most did _not_ know was that the world had been nearly incinerated not by technology alone but, rather, by the struggle between science and sorcery. Some knowledge was best left sleeping.

But sometimes, in places like this, pieces of it came to light.

With a brittle crackle-crack of glass underfoot, his partner half-circled him to take in the scope of the wreckage, then glanced back to meet his gaze. "You should have called me up--"

"I've dealt with artifact mirrors before. They're harmless." Preston was back under total control, of course. If some small part of him was still disturbed by his reaction to what just happened, to what he'd just seen, then it was well stowed in the back of his mind with all of the other bits and pieces that he never, ever acknowledged aloud.

"Please don't do my work for me, Cleric. I don't do yours for you, now do I?" Magus Partridge was examining the frame now, fingers sliding along the incised letters. "Erised was harmless. That doesn't mean _this_ was; they're all different. I've told you that." He was tracing the first word again, a slight thoughtful frown was settling into his forehead. _Ytinretla_. "You looked into it?"

Preston nodded, just once. Perfectly imperturbable. "Yes."

"I'll read your full report then." As Partridge deciphered the rest of the inscription with a trained glance, his expression was a glow of curious regret...but when he returned the illicit emotions were replaced by a blandly warm facade. Partner or no partner, friend or no friend, Preston was also potentially the most dangerous man in his world. One slip...

It was getting harder these days.

As if on cue, Preston's keen gaze flicked down a glint of gold trailing from Partridge's pocket. "I'll be curious to read your report too. What did you find?"

There was no accusation in Preston's voice, no danger in his stance -- Partridge knew his partner better than he knew himself, and he knew he had the man's trust. Perhaps too much of it, all matters considered. Still, it was a hazardous area to tread... "No portkeys this time, you have my word on that." Which was both good and bad: a carefully hacked portkey could lead Enforcers to a new nest, but one set off by accident could cost good men. "We've retrieved three artifact portraits, in clear and communicable condition...I've cleared most of the rest downstairs. All safely flammable. Except this."

There was of, of course, no point in trying to hide the trinket after it'd already been noted. Partridge fished it out carefully, touching only the fine chain. "Obviously it won't burn, and it's my professional opinion that smashing it could be a very bad idea. I'll deal with it personally when we're back."

Preston simply nodded as the little golden dial once again vanished from view. He trusted Partridge to know these things, though there was something about this one that left him wishing to ask more. However, his partner didn't seem to think it was important enough to discuss further, and he was a man who knew very well what he was doing in this regard.

Thus, when Partridge simply moved on with the conversation, Preston moved with him -- physically as well, back towards the hallway. "You'll wish to interrogate the paintings before we incinerate them, of course," the Magus was saying. "I've had them bagged and set aside. Here or--?"

"We'll take them with us. I'll want proper recordings of the session." If Preston knew what a cold shudder felt like, he'd be having a hell of one right now as he turned his back on the empty mirror frame. "No mistakes this time. This one's dangerous."

He meant the man who'd collected this items. The collection didn't seem like much, but as Preston trusted Partridge's expertise with arcane artifacts so too did the Magus trust the Cleric's gut sense of these matters. In fact, he had his own reasons for agreeing: something about this particular quarry didn't set right. The little bauble now in his own pocket, for example. What sort of man possessed such a rarity and yet didn't bother to keep it on his person or to lock it safely away?

Partridge's hand clenched around that very item, now safe in his keeping. He had no specific plans for it, but it was too amazing to simply give over to the Despelling crew back at the department...

In the end, it didn't matter. He never had time to figure out how it worked. His partner found the small golden relic on the tray of belongings taken from the rogue Magus's body when they'd hauled it in for disposal...after said partner had been forced to put a bullet in his brain for sense crimes. Looking glasses never lie. They may distort, and they may obscure, but they never, ever lie.

What Cleric Preston did with the Time Turner after that is another story.

And, unfortunately, there are no shards left of the mirror large enough to tell it.

 


End file.
